onsdag 21 februari 2018

Groupthink of Global Warming Alarmism Shattered

Global warming alarmism from the use of fossil fules has taken its grip of Western countries in a wave of groupthink with the following characteristics, as presented in the excellent study Global Warming, a case study in groupthink by Christopher Booker, recalling the three rules formulated by Irving Janis in Victims of Groupthink from 1972:

belief not based on reality, hard to disprove

consensus replaces factual evidence

chase of "deniers" or "heretics" questioning the belief.

Booker ends his study with the following prediction:

But the groupthink driving both that belief itself and the political response to it has always essentially been centred on those countries of the Western world, which not only originated the panic over global in the first place, but have remained its main drivers ever since.

Indeed, it is precisely this fact which is now turning out to be the crux of the whole story.

Yes, the crux is that global warming alarmism is groupthink of people in Western countries (but not all) and certainly not in the rest of world, where the use of fossil fuels will continue to rise to lift people out of poverty. The disintegration of the Western groupthink of global warming started with the retreat of the US from the Paris agreement, somehow emerging from a Trumpian gut feeling that the agreement was unfair.

With a cynical (realistic) view it may seem that Western politicians once launched the fossil fuel scare with a (maybe unconscious) agenda to prevent developing countries to take their bigger share and develop and take over the world scene.

The Paris agreement shows that this prevention does not work. Even worse, putting emission limits only for Western countries will speed up rather than slow down the decline of the West. When this understanding enters the minds of Western politicians, as it did with Trump, fossil fuel alarmism will be over (and then be replaced by a new scare with som other hidden agenda). It may not take very long...